Musk said military innovation in space can't happen as long as it continues to use expendable rockets. SpaceNews.com

NASA awarded a contract to SpaceX Feb. 28 for the launch of a mission to a large metallic asteroid on the company’s Falcon Heavy rocket. SpaceNews.com

As the independent review of last December’s test flight of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner commercial crew vehicle nears completion, the company said it will perform more rigorous testing to catch errors that slipped through on that flight. SpaceNews.com

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission on Feb. 28 voted to auction a large portion of C-band in December under a plan that includes $9.7 billion in incentives to expedite relocating satellite operators out of the spectrum to make way for high-speed 5G networks.  SpaceNews.com

Relativity Space, a startup using 3-D printing to manufacture small launch vehicles, will move its headquarters to Long Beach, joining several other launch vehicle companies in that Southern California city. SpaceNews.com

China will launch Beidou navigation satellites in March and May, completing a constellation designed for an array of civil and military applications. SpaceNews.com

Northrop Grumman announced it completed a static fire test of the second stage of its OmegA rocket in Promontory, Utah. SpaceNews.com

From an Air Force Academy graduating class of about 1,000, as many as 62 or 63 second lieutenants will go to the Space Force. SpaceNews.com

Thompson: “To those who do not want to be part of the Space Force, we are not going to ask you involuntarily to join.” SpaceNews.com

SpaceX is proposing a significant increase in launch activity in Florida over the next few years, including missions to polar orbits and those that will require the use of a new vertical payload integration tower. SpaceNews.com

India's launch plans for the coming year include Earth observation, communication and navigation satellites, while also making progress in human spaceflight and space transportation. SpaceNews.com

The chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee’s space subcommittee expressed doubts any space-related legislation, or even spending bills, can make it through Congress this year. SpaceNews.com

Telesat and SES are urging the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to reject Intelsat’s request for a larger share of the $9.7 billion in incentive payments the FCC plans to offer satellite operators to hasten the clearing of C-band spectrum the United States wants to repurpose for 5G cellular networks. SpaceNews.com

Also under consideration is what to call the space wings. SpaceNews.com

Sea Launch’s mobile Odyssey launchpad was loaded onto a cargo ship, the Xin Guang Hua, for transport from California. SpaceNews.com

Northrop Grumman’s satellite servicing spacecraft successfully docked with an Intelsat communications satellite Feb. 25 in a bid to keep the nearly 19-year-old satellite in service an additional five years, Northrop Grumman and Intelsat executives said Feb. 26.  SpaceNews.com

The quest to find and investigate life beyond the Earth has reached a tipping point. We stand on the brink of changing the perspective of humanity’s place in the universe and finally answering the question “Are we alone?” SpaceNews.com

This year shows no signs of a let up in space-sector momentum. Here are 20 predictions for 2020 as seen by SpaceNews reporters and correspondents. SpaceNews.com

Satellite broadband and hardware provider EchoStar added 20,000 HughesNet internet subscribers through its Brazilian joint venture with Yahsat, boosting subscriber numbers as EchoStar’s satellite capacity becomes limited.  SpaceNews.com

NASA is asking companies in its commercial lunar landing services program to bid on delivering a NASA rover whose launch has been slightly delayed. SpaceNews.com

A star of about eight percent the Sun's mass has been caught emitting an enormous 'super flare' of X-rays – a dramatic high-energy eruption that poses a fundamental problem for astronomers, who did not think it possible on stars that small.

First measurements by a Solar Orbiter science instrument reached the ground on Thursday, providing a confirmation to the international science teams that the magnetometer on board is in a good shape following a successful deployment of the spacecraft's instrument boom.

ESA's Solar Orbiter mission lifted off on an Atlas V 411 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 05:03 CET on 10 February on its mission to study the Sun from new perspectives.

ESA's exoplanet-observer CHEOPS acquired the first image of its initial target star, following the successful telescope cover opening on 29 January 2020. The intentionally blurry image is a product of the specially designed telescope optics, which are deliberately defocused to maximise the precision of CHEOPS' measurements and enable its unprecedented study of exoplanets, or planets in other solar systems.

Following an internal assessment of the results of the phase 0 studies, the European Space Agency is moving forward starting the Definition Phase (phase A) for the F-class mission Comet Interceptor.

A grand synthesis of Rosetta data has shown how its target comet repeatedly changed colour dur-ing the two years it was watched by the spacecraft. The chameleon comet's nucleus became progres-sively less red as it made its close pass around the Sun, and then red again as it returned to deep space.

Six weeks after the launch of CHEOPS, ESA's Characterising Exoplanet Satellite, the telescope cover was opened as part of the mission's in-orbit commissioning.

A 500-day global observation campaign spearheaded more than three years ago by ESA’s galaxy-mapping powerhouse Gaia has provided unprecedented insights into the binary system of stars that caused an unusual brightening of an even more distant star.

Observations from ESA's Rosetta spacecraft are shedding light on the mysterious make-up of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, revealing a mix of compounds thought to be essential precursors to life – including salts of ammonium and a particular type of hydrocarbons. These new studies suggest the comet gleaned this mate-rial from the presolar cloud where the Solar System formed 4.6 billion years ago.

Material falling into a black hole casts X-rays out into space – and now, for the first time, ESA's XMM-Newton X-ray observatory has used the reverberating echoes of this radiation to map the dynamic behaviour and surroundings of a black hole itself.